


Will Worries About Her

by littlerumbird



Series: Interstellar Oceans [1]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/M, Imzadi (Star Trek)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24400786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerumbird/pseuds/littlerumbird
Summary: This is a character study of sorts of Commander Will Riker in TNG Season 1. It is centered largely on the events of "Skin of Evil" but also references many earlier episodes of Season 1.
Relationships: William Riker/Deanna Troi
Series: Interstellar Oceans [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026340
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	Will Worries About Her

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all of you kind souls who have already left kudos and such warm comments. I feel so welcomed to this fandom, even though I found it incredibly late. I can't stop saying how soft I am for these two.

Will worries about her, more than he should. She knows it. He’s sure others suspect it. When he first saw her, standing in a corridor of the Enterprise like it was as natural to her as breathing, he had stared. Wondered if he’d fallen into some parallel dimension. And it had taken long moments to register that she was speaking. Moments even longer still before he realized she was speaking _in his mind._

Deanna Troi, he was sure, did not belong on a starship. She was the daughter of a diplomat. From a world of rich foliage and gardens and fields heady with more botanicals than he could hope to name in a lifetime. Idyllic, almost a fabled Eden. In his best memories she was picnics and rich desserts and many other things that he couldn’t think about while on the bridge.

She doesn’t want to rely on him, and he can read that immediately. She’s determined to stand on her own two feet, and Will does his best to give her the space.

But sometimes she invades his space. Like when he simply wanted an escape from her betrothal—the one she’d mentioned once to him, years ago, when they imagined a future together. Deanna had been honest about her imagined future—or rather, the one her parents and the Millers imagined for her. He had been naïve about his own, and he’d hurt her terribly. And it occurred to him later that he deserved to watch all of this unfold right in front of him. And he owed it to her to honor her only request that he dance at her wedding when he’d rather hide on a holodeck or the nearest escape pod.

He was relieved, in a way he did little to hide, when it all fell apart. He told himself it would be different if she had seemed upset about it, rather than relieved. He told himself she didn’t really love Wyatt. And he was aware that while those things might be true, they weren’t the real truth. He let himself hope, in a back corner of his heart and mind, that it might mean something still to her. That he might still mean something to her.

He can’t give her space when a non-organic, formerly microscopic being is making is presence known. The entire ship trembling with its power, shaking the literal deck beneath their feet. It’s more instinct than any conscious thought that has Will reaching to catch Deanna. He can feel her frustration when he holds on a bit longer than is really necessary, but it wasn’t seemly for either an officer _or_ a gentleman to let her go sprawling.

More than once he was glad she was busy with appointments when he knows the captain wishes she were on hand for away teams. She’s invaluable, he knows that better perhaps than anyone else. But it could have easily been Deanna who fell down into a cavern, rather that Dr. Crusher.

Other times her abilities nearly drove him up the wall and back down again. And she’s the one finding him. Will wondered, more than once, exactly what about the viral intoxication had made which person seek out which. While he trusted the crew of the Enterprise, he was grateful in retrospect that Deanna had sought him out. Her eyes were so wide; and as dark as they were, this time the pupils were blown with sickness so much that under other circumstances he would have thought someone had slipped her a drug. She was using _that_ voice, melted in his arms, fingers toying with the hair at his nape through the walk to the turbo lift. He was thanking any deities he could imagine that she had finally exhausted herself by the time he hit sickbay instead of giving into the urge to divert a number of decks elsewhere. He really wasn’t sure how he managed to do anything that day with that version of Deanna.

And she was, he hated to admit even to himself, distracting on Angel One. She was nothing if not passionate. No matter how professional she was (and she was, above all else, a professional)… Well, nobody did jealous like Deanna Troi. The more Mistress Beata drew him in, the stronger the emotions roiled off of her. Annoyance. Distrust. Jealousy. A small part of it might have been amusing had the circumstances not turned so serious so quickly.

In all honesty, he had been relieved she could go to a conference. Escape for a bit. Be surrounded with peers. Expand her skills and learn some new ideas. But he couldn’t deny that it was blood chilling to hear the first distress call from the shuttle’s pilot. The conference should have been a respite because they might have breaks between battles and dire situations, but Deanna’s job did not come with lulls.

Alexandra’s mother was still struggling with the separation, and he’d heard rumors they were considering taking a new posting on a planet with less risks than exploration.

Counseling sessions were private, but crews talked. And rumors had it that a few children were still struggling with nightmares and separation anxiety. More than once he’d seen Deanna leave the bridge early for an unexpected crisis or join them for an early shift with circles under her eyes only to later hear she had been roused for a distressed person or other when she should have been in the middle of her sleep cycle.

She bore up well under it. Practically thrived on it at times. The other counselors rotated on-call, though she would have been well within her rights as lead counselor to be exempt given her already busy schedule with patients and on the bridge itself. Conferences were meant to be benign. But he didn’t doubt there was quite a bit of understatement to the pilot’s reference to her being shaken.

It shook Will. To remember how fragile life was on these outskirts of the known galaxy. How it was far too simple for a small shuttle like that to go missing entirely, wiped from existence. One solar flare. A slight miscalculation. Come out of warp too close to a planet’s gravitational pull, or worse yet into the maelstrom of an asteroid field or trajectory of a comet. Rare. But not unheard of.

It reminded him of his own planet’s history. His ancestors leaving the known lower states to pursue the gold rush. The wild of the Yukon and savage winters. When a few steps in the wrong direction could mean being frozen alive in a snowstorm or falling into a crevasse never to be seen again. As a boy he had read of, transfixed with the horror of, ships in the eighteenth century (and many before then and some after) setting sail never to be seen again. Of airplanes taking flight, only to vanish from existence.

In the end, he had never been so thankful to be First Officer. Because while he knew the captain would not let one of their crew be lost to space, Will was determined he wasn’t stopping until he saw her for himself. His responsibility was the well-being of the crew. But he owed her much more than personally overseeing Deanna’s own safe return.


End file.
